Political Parties History

Populism, on both the right and the left, has spread like wildfire throughout Europe and the United States and is making inroads in other parts of the world. In simplest terms, populism is a political ideology that vilifies elites, minorities, and foreigners while lionizing "the people."

In November 1960, the Democratic party dominated Texas. The newly elected vice president, Lyndon Johnson, was a Texan. Democrats held all 30 statewide elective positions. The state legislature had 181 Democrats and no Republicans or anyone else. Then fast-forward 50 years to November 2010. Texas has not voted for a Democratic president since 1976. Every statewide elective office is held by Republicans. Representing Texas in Washington is a congressional delegation of 25 Republicans and nine Democrats.

They were the political odd couple - the two most powerful men in the country, a pair who "couldn't be more different or more the same." For six years, Matthews was on the inside, watching the evolving relationship between President Reagan and Speaker of the House O’Neill. Drawing not only on his own remarkable knowledge but on extensive interviews with those closest to his subjects, Matthews brings this unlikely friendship to life in his unique voice.

Historian Sean Wilentz presents two key insights that together reveal a clearer, much-needed vision of American political history. First, partisanship has almost always been a feature of American history and in fact has made possible the nation's greatest social reforms. There is little to be gained from a "postpartisan" political world. Second, the recent attention to economic inequality has a long history. From the founders' generation to the present, America's egalitarian tradition has appeared and reappeared like an underground river.

In a stunning follow-up to her number one best seller Slander, leading conservative pundit Ann Coulter contends that liberals have been wrong on every foreign policy issue, from the fight against Communism at home and abroad, the Nixon and the Clinton presidencies, and the struggle with the Soviet empire right up to today's war on terrorism.

Ann Coulter, whose examination of the Clinton impeachment was a major national bestseller and earned widespread praise, now takes on an even tougher issue. At a time when Democrats and Republicans should be overwhelmingly congenial, American political debate has become increasingly hostile, overly personal, and insufferably trivial. Whether conducted in Congress or on the political talk shows, played out at dinners or cocktail parties, politics is a nasty sport. At the risk of giving away the ending: It’s all liberals’ fault.

American democracy is at an impasse. After years of zero-sum partisan trench warfare, our political institutions are deteriorating. Our norms are collapsing. Democrats and Republicans no longer merely argue; they cut off contact with each other. In short, the two-party system is breaking our democracy, and driving us all crazy.

The Naked God is Howard Fast's public repudiation of the Communist Party, of which he was a devoted member for thirteen years until reading about the full scope of atrocities committed by the Soviet Union under Stalin. The best-selling author of Spartacus and Citizen Tom Paine, Howard Fast lent his writing talents and celebrity to the communist cause as a steadfast advocate and public figure. However, he felt increasingly ill at ease with the superior manner Party leaders took with rank-and-file members and with rumors of Soviet anti-Semitism.

Bartho deftly provides a new perspective on Reagan's political career and the Republican Party of the Reagan era while detailing the often-rancorous philosophical differences between Reaganism and southern conservatism and the resulting political conflicts. Whistling Dixie highlights a divide in the Republican Party and in American conservatism that has often been overlooked-a divide that laid the foundations for the GOP's southernization and ultimately led to the rise of Donald Trump.

In 2009, an unemployed mother of two and a politically inexperienced Northern California attorney met on a conference call that would end up starting one of the largest grassroots political organizations in American history, the Tea Party Patriots. Fueled by the fires of passion and patriotism, Mark Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin have become the faces of the most powerful political movement in the country, empowering their more than twenty million members by using both high-tech advances and the time-tested American tradition of rallying in public.

Alan I. Abramowitz has emerged as a leading spokesman for the view that our current political divide is not confined to a small group of elites and activists but a key feature of the American social and cultural landscape. The polarization of the political and media elites, he argues, arose and persists because it accurately reflects the state of American society. Here, he goes further: The polarization is unique in modern US history. Today's party divide reflects an unprecedented alignment of many different divides: racial and ethnic, religious, ideological, and geographic.

From the start of Barack Obama's presidency in 2009, conservative populist groups began fomenting political fractiousness, dissent, and surprising electoral success. The Tea Party was one of the major characters driving this story. But, as Khadijah Costley White argues in this book, the Tea Party's ascent to major political phenomenon can be attributed to the way in which partisan and non-partisan news outlets "branded" the Party as a pot-stirrer in political conflicts over race, class, and gender.

Political liberalism in Britain: the history of the Liberal Democrats and their predecessor parties, the Liberal Party and the SDP, from the earliest days of liberal thought in the 17th century to the Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition and the 2015 and 2017 elections.

In the wake of one of the most tumultuous conventions in Republican history, the party of Lincoln nominated in 1940 a prominent businessman and Wall Street attorney for president. Though Wendell Willkie would lose to FDR, David Levering Lewis reveals in this news-making reclamation that the story of this Hoosier-born corporate chairman's life is the story of an America that could have been. Popular for his down-home Midwestern charm and unaffected candor, Willkie possessed a supple intellect and a concealed disdain for political opportunism that, had he not died prematurely, would have revolutionized American politics with its advocacy of bipartisanship and social responsibility.

With relentless media coverage, breathtaking events, and extraordinary congressional and independent investigations, it is hard to believe that we still might not know some of the most significant facts about the presidency of George W. Bush. Yet beneath the surface events of the Bush presidency lies a secret history, a series of hidden events that makes a mockery of current debate.

In A Bad Day on the Romney Campaign: An Insider's Account, Gabriel Schoenfeld, a senior adviser to the Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for nearly two years, for the first time speaks out about the internal failures of the 2012 campaign. The book illuminates the chain of errors that ultimately contributed to Romney's defeat. Rich with detail and full of high drama, it will be of interest to anyone who wants to go behind the scenes to gain an inside look at how our political system actually operates, with all of its charms and all of its flaws.

In Italia, quasi tutti i giorni muore un partito. In Italia, quasi tutti i giorni nasce un nuovo movimento. È difficile votare due volte di fila lo stesso simbolo, lo stesso schieramento, lo stesso leader. Essere di sinistra, in Italia, è un inferno. Cosa direbbe Freud, vedendo che oggi sono i padri, più o meno nobili, a ribellarsi a figli ingrati e rottamatori? E cosa direbbe Nietzsche di fronte all'eterno ritorno di una storia sempre diversa e sempre uguale a se stessa?

In this fascinating investigation into the real life inner workings of a post-Trump American government, uncover the odd and eccentric personalities grappling for their own bit of power in D.C. The Big Break investigates how Washington works, and how different kinds of people try to make it...

Explore the captivating life of Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong is recognized as one of the most influential figures of modern Chinese history. As the founding father of the People’s Republic of China and the centerpiece of one of the world’s most intense personality cults, the extent of his influence is difficult to understate. This biography details Mao’s remarkable journey from the son of a peasant to one of modern history’s greatest, and highly polarizing, leaders. It aims to provide a better understanding of Mao, his personality traits, and personal experiences that shaped his worldview.

This program includes an introduction read by Thomas B. Reston. In this timely audiobook, Thomas B. Reston delivers a concise history of the Democratic party and the founding myths and principles it has abandoned over time, thus losing its working class base—and its soul. The 2016 election...